Blog Aginor's Painting Blog

Both Necromancers are Reaper miniatures, yes.

I originally chose the left one because with his sword, staff, and cloak he makes a good Heinrich Kemmler. Unfortunately Heinrich has no warscroll anymore.

 

I was shocked how cheap they were. Granted, not that good quality compared to GW plastic models, but they do have a lot of details to paint and they look kinda nice.
And yeah, those two combined were actually cheaper than one GW Necromancer.

 

And here are my Black Knights again.
Same with the bases here. Quickly done and good enough for tabletop standard I guess at least judging by some of the models I saw in my local GW by some players.
I don't know, maybe they are just not that into painting, but I would never play with unpainted models, nor with models (in that case Bloodletters) that look like they were just sprayed red from above and black from below, then shaded with Nuln Oil all over them and that's it.
Surely won't win a Golden Demon or so but I am happy (and still improving my quality).

 

I posted a few more pics of them on page 16 of this thread.
But if you want to see more I can take a few closeup shots tomorrow when I take more shots of my army for this blog.

The Black Knights have a LOT of details including vines and stuff. For the next five (I bought one of the new Deathrattle Barrow Lords boxes) I want to see if I can try a few things more. I found them to be quite good for improving my brush control, although it made them tedious to paint.

 

And here is my Ghoul King once more, this time with a base.
For that base I went for a "end of winter" style with some green grass tufts already visible between the snow and the rocks.

The ghoul (my wife calls him Gollum and says "my precioussss" when she sees him) has magnetized feet and the rocks have one magnet each so he can stand on that base.
There are two additional magnets on the base so I can use it for something else when the Ghoul doesn't need it. More about that very soon.

Fun fact: every time I look at that guy I remember how easy it was to paint him and how cool he looks and I consider starting an FEC army.
...not anytime soon though. My backlog is huge enough already. Two and a half armies are enough for one year I think.

 

Dont know what is wrong with the pics. I can see them and the forum software says attached=full....

Maybe it is the spam protection as I am posting like a madman these days...

 

Ok whatever. Doesnt count as spam if it is on topic.
So here's the other guy using that base: my Vampire Lord.

I know his pose looks... a bit funny to say the least (my friend @Mesandres said it looks a bit like he was taking a dump between those rocks there) but I wanted to be able to play a Vampire Lord on foot at least once. Normally he will ride on his Zombie Dragon I think.

 

I had a lot of fun painting the little details on that guy like his chalice (with blood) and the vial with blood that he has on a chain around his neck, the book he is carrying, and so on.
I dislike the horns on his back a bit. Not my style.
The armor is cool but I didn't want to make it red like on the box. Too bright for my taste. I considered painting it dark red but that would have had almost no contrast to his dragon's flesh and skin so I went for dark purple. That color looks sufficiently royal and fits in quite well.

 

Here are a few closeup shots of my Black Knights as requested by @Lord-Marcus.
More of that army soon.

The powder effect on the model is from applying the snow, I forgot to blow/brush some of the excess snow away. It looks cool though so that's not too severe IMO.

I really like the rust on the armor.
Recipe:
Some black as base and painted it Gun Metal, then shaded it Soft Tone.
I then used Dry Rust (thuck and thin as needed) and then drybrushed it with Bright Silver. I used Army Painter colors.
If you use GW colors that would be
- optional undercoat with abaddon black
- leadbelcher
- seraphim sepia or reikland flesh shade
- ryza rust or typhus corrosion (the latter one is a bit darker
- Necron compound or stormhost silver

 

Ok here it finally is: the Zombie Dragon.



When I decided to make Death my secondary army I wanted to make a big horde of Skeletons, so the natural choice was Deathrattle. But I quickly noticed there are no big Deathrattle units. I had hoped for a bone giant or a skeleton dragon. I found the latter in Soulblight though, and since I need Necromancers from Deathmages anyway I went for a grand alliance Death army, making a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon my big centerpiece.






Being a big fan of magnetizing for options I instantly went through the building instructions when I got the box, trying to determine if it is possible to make those versions convertible.

And indeed I noticed that besides the obvious weapon options for the Vampire Lord (I will mostly use the sword I guess but wanted to have the option to use the Lance as well) I saw that while the two monsters share all of the parts they have different poses, and the neck parts are overlapping in a way that doesn't make it easy.

So I tried a few things and came to the following conclusions:
- The Terrorgheist pose works only for that version (the Dragon bends its head down do it would hit the ground with his tongue), but the Dragon pose works for both. The Terrorgheist pose is much cooler but I had to choose the other one. The only way around that would have been a raised base but I had already planned how my base should look so that wasn't an option this time.
- I had to saw off a part of the spine to get rid of the interlocking parts, otherwise I would scratch the paint too much when changing the necks.
I also glued the ribcage on, but only on one side, that way I can move it a bit to get more space to swap the necks. When I attached the wings I notived it droops a bit (creating a crevice near the spine where it would normally be glued in place) so I used a tiny amount of poster putty to keep it in place.
- I had to be very careful with the amount of shade and drybrush used on the optional parts so they would look the same, hiding the seam where the neck attaches to the body.
- I had to harmonize the colors. I chose black for the skin because that fits better. Grey looks cooler on the Terrorgheist but worse on the Dragon IMO. It is a compromise looking worse than if I had gone for just one version but it looks good enough for me.

The Dragon being convertible also meant that I had to make the riders exchangeable. Since I didnt like the elevated stone pose for the Ghoul King anyway I just made my own, flat base that fits both.
The Ghoul King's feet were magnetized in a way allowing to fit him both on the cork stones on the base and on the Terrorgheist's neck. Normally he is glued on there so I had to find a pose that makes it is possible to hide the magnets for attaching him a bit.

The whole model was primed white (I had used up all my skeleton bone primer).
The bone parts are Skeleton bone, shades soft tone, and drybrushed brainmatter beige in a few spots. The flesh is dark red shaded red and then shaded soft tone.
On the wings I blended black and dark red together by drybrushing before applying the shades (red and sepia again), and I think the gradient worked quite well. It was a lot of work but the result is worth it.

For the base I wanted to try out ice. The shores of a frozen lake were the plan.
So after putting the Dragon on the base I drew a shore line and placed some rocks, then applied sand to one half of the base, and painted the other half with Temple Guard Blue and shaded it blue. That color would later shine a bit through the cracks in the ice. Then I applied my Ziterdes Dead-Earth-Paste. The advantage over GW's Agrellan Earth is the price and that it is white instead of brown. Otherwise it seems to be pretty much the same stuff.
I waited a full day for it to develop the cracks and fully cure, then carefully shaded it with watered down blue tone. A bit of white drybrush and a coat of Vallejo gloss varnish makes the ice effect as I wanted it.


Of course I first tried that ice technique on two small bases. It is nice how you can go for small or big cracks just by applying the paste thicker or thinner.
You can also vary the structure by making it more flat or not.
Here are my test bases:


On the shore I applied some moss flock and a grey drybrush over the brown earth to make sure that the parts not covered by snow look decent as well. Then I applied the snow, making sure I also got some snow onto the rocks and the Dragon's tail and feet. Also put a few thin snow patches on the ice to make it look more natural.

Pictures of the Terrorgheist version and the base will be in the next post.

 

So here is the Terrorgheist:



...And with its rider. I think the pose looks cool, just the rider looks a bit silly. But I had to put the magnets there to have them both on the Terrorgheist neck.



Here you can see the magnetized parts:
I only needed 15 magnets because the neck fit to the body without magnets just fine.




Here you can see how the parts fit together:





Base pics in the next post since I am running out of attachment slots.

 

Here are some shots of the base. I included the sword in the lake as a fun little detail.